Who is Being Facile?

I very seldom go wallowing about responding to comments in my comment threads. As I have posted before, I try to learn from criticisms in the comments and improve or modify my positions next time I post on a similar subject. Besides, I would lose my life to playing the troll game on climate issues.

However, I am sitting at home with some time on my hands and thought I would address a representative critical comment, from this post on the sun. Take this post as evidence, I guess, that I am perfectly capable of responding in depth to criticisms in the comments, had I this much time to spend with every one.

Staggering. You obviously haven’t read a single scholarly paper on this, or even looked at the data. This graph should dispel all your wrong-headed thinking. It’s the temperature, and monthly sunspot numbers, both plotted as 11 year running means (and scaled so that they roughly align). How, exactly, did rising temperatures in 1920 trigger increased solar activity 10 years later? Why did a peak in solar activity in the 1950s not correspond to a rise in temperatures then? Why do the green line and the red line diverge so wildly after 1985? Why is there basically hardly any correlation between solar activity and temperatures, over the last 150 years?

You betray a great immaturity on this web page, regurgitating the same nonsense time and again, calling people ‘morons’ and never even having the courtesy to respond when people tell you you’re wrong. When a fellow denialist tells you you’ve misrepresented him, and you don’t even bother to reply, let alone correct your error, what becomes crystal clear is that you’re simply dishonest.

A couple of responses:

One of the great things about WordPress is that I have a nifty and powerful site search plugin (called Search Regex). I just searched every post on this site. The word “moron” has never, ever appeared on this site in text I have written. She puts moron in quotes, but I am fairly certain she is not quoting me. According to a Google search of this site, “moron” does appear 20-30 times in the comment section, usually wielded by my critics.

When folks email me that I have made a mistake in quoting them, I post an update 100% of the time. However, I occasionally miss such notifications if they are posted the comments and not emailed to me. Believe it or not, I can go days without even glancing at this site or thinking about climate when the real job intervenes. But that is what comments are for. Unlike other climate sites that will remain nameless, *cough* realclimate *cough* I don’t moderate any comments, good, bad, or indifferent, except to eliminate outright spam. If you disagree or I screwed up, that’s what the comments are there for.

The commenter argues that I am simplistic and immature in this post. I find this odd, I guess, for the following reason: One group out there tends to argue that the sun is largely irrelevant to the past century’s temperature increases. Another argues that the sun is the main or only driver. I argue that the evidence seems to point to it being a mix, with the sun explaining some but not all of the 20th century increase, and I am the one who is simplistic? Just for the record, I actually began the post with this:

“I wouldn’t say that I am a total sun hawk, meaning that I believe the sun and natural trends are 100% to blame for global warming. I don’t think it unreasonable to posit that once all the natural effects are unwound, man-made CO2 may be contributing a 0.5-1.0C a century trend”

The commenter links to this graph, which I will include. It is a comparison of the Hadley CRUT3 global temperature index (green) and sunspot numbers (red):

Since I am so ridiculously immature, I guess I don’t trust myself to interpret this chart, but I would have happily used this chart myself had I had access to it originally (The chart uses a trailing 12 average of temperature as well as sunspots, which is why the line does not flatten and fall at the end. I have to think a bit if I accept this metric as the correct comparison).

It is wildly dangerous to try to visually interpret data and data correlations, but I don’t think it is unreasonable to say that there might be a relationship between these two data sets. Certainly not 100%, but then again the same could easily be said of the relationship of temperature to Co2. The same type of inconsistencies the commenter points out in this correlation could easily be made for Co2 (e.g., why, if CO2 was increasing, and in fact accelerating, were temps in 1980 lower than 1940?The answer, of course, is that climate is complicated. But I see nothing in this chart that is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the sun might have been responsible for perhaps half of the 20th century warming. And if Co2 is left with credit for just 0.3-0.4C warming over the last century, it is a very tough road to get from this past warming to sensitivities as high as 3C or greater. I have all along contended that Co2 will likely drive 0.5-1.0C warming over the next century, and see nothing in this chart that makes me want to change that prediction.

I was playing around a bit more, and found adding in PDO cycles fairly interesting (really this should be some combined AMO/PDO metric, and the exact dates of PDO reversals can be argued about, but I was going for quick and dirty). Here is what I got:

If I wanted to make the same kind of observations as the commenter, I could say that temperature outpaced the sun during PDO warm phases and lagged the sun during cool phases, about what one would expect. Again, I firmly believe there is still a positive warming trend when you take out cycles like the PDO and effects of the sun and other such influences — but that trend, even if all due to CO2, appears to be far below catastrophic sensitivity levels.

It is kind of ironic that the post was actually not an in-depth analysis of solar cycles, but merely a statement of a hypothesis that solar activity level rather than the trend in solar activity should be regressed against temperature changes. This seems like a fair hypothesis — one only has to think of a burner on a stove to understand it — but the commenter ignored it. In fact, the divergence she points to in the late 1990’s is really exactly to the point. Should a decreased solar output yield decreased temperatures? Or, if that output is still higher than a historical average, will it still drive temperatures higher? The answer likely boils down to how fast equilibrium is reached, and I don’t know the answer, nor do I think anyone else does either.

I ask that people use their terms carefully. I am not a “denialist” if that is meant to mean that I deny any anthropogenic effects on temperature or climate. I am a denialist if that is meant to mean that I deny that warming from anthropogenic Co2 will cause catastrophic impacts that will outweigh the cost of Co2 abatement.

Updates: OK, I see that in the post in question, one of the quotes from another source used the word “morons.” For those not experienced with reading blogs, indented text is generally quoted material from another source. I guess I now understand the confusion — I stand by my statement, though, that I never use such terms in my own writing. It is not the style I try to adopt on this blog. Writers I quote have their own style, and my quoting them does not necesarily mean I totally agree with them, merely that the point they are making is somehow thought-provoking or one I want to comment on, extend, or rebut.

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WateWater vapour is the most important green house gas followed by methane. The third most important greenhouse gas is CO2, and it does not correlate well with global warming or cooling either; in fact, CO2 in the atmosphere trails warming which is clear natural evidence for its well-studied inverse solubility in water: CO2 dissolves in cold water and bubbles out of warm water. The equilibrium in seawater is very high, making seawater a great ‘sink’; CO2 is 34 times more soluble in water than air is soluble in water.
Correlation is not causation to be sure. The causation has been studied, however, and while the radiation from the sun varies only in the fourth decimal place, the magnetism is awesome. As I understand it, the hypothesis of the Danish National Space Center goes as follows:
Quiet sun → reduced magnetic and thermal flux = reduced solar wind → geomagnetic shield drops → galactic cosmic ray flux → more low-level clouds and more snow → more albedo effect (more heat reflected) → colder climate
Active sun → enhanced magnetic and thermal flux = solar wind → geomagnetic shield response → less low-level clouds → less albedo (less heat reflected) → warmer climate
That is how the bulk of climate change might work, coupled with (modulated by) sunspot peak frequency there are cycles of global warming and cooling like waves in the ocean. When the waves are closely spaced, the planets warm; when the waves are spaced farther apart, the planets cool.
Using a box of air in a Copenhagen lab, physicists traced the growth of clusters of molecules of the kind that build cloud condensation nuclei. These are specks of sulphuric acid on which cloud droplets form. High-energy particles driven through the laboratory ceiling by exploded stars far away in the Galaxy – the cosmic rays – liberate electrons in the air, which help the molecular clusters to form much faster than climate scientists have modeled in the atmosphere. That may explain the link between cosmic rays, cloudiness and climate change.
The ultimate cause of the solar magnetic cycle may be cyclicity in the Sun-Jupiter centre of gravity. We await more on that. In addition, although the post 60s warming period is over, it has allowed the principal green house gas, water vapour, to kick in with humidity, clouds, rain and snow depending on where you live to provide the negative feedback that scientists use to explain the existence of complex life on Earth for 550 million years. The planet heats and cools naturally and our gasses are the thermostat. Check the web site of the Danish National Space Center.
Keeping in mind that windmills are hazardous to birds, be wary of the unintended consequences of the all-knowing environmental lobby groups.
r vapour is the most important green house gas followed by methane. The third most important greenhouse gas is CO2, and it does not correlate well with global warming or cooling either; in fact, CO2 in the atmosphere trails warming which is clear natural evidence for its well-studied inverse solubility in water: CO2 dissolves in cold water and bubbles out of warm water. The equilibrium in seawater is very high, making seawater a great ‘sink’; CO2 is 34 times more soluble in water than air is soluble in water.
Correlation is not causation to be sure. The causation has been studied, however, and while the radiation from the sun varies only in the fourth decimal place, the magnetism is awesome. As I understand it, the hypothesis of the Danish National Space Center goes as follows:
Quiet sun → reduced magnetic and thermal flux = reduced solar wind → geomagnetic shield drops → galactic cosmic ray flux → more low-level clouds and more snow → more albedo effect (more heat reflected) → colder climate
Active sun → enhanced magnetic and thermal flux = solar wind → geomagnetic shield response → less low-level clouds → less albedo (less heat reflected) → warmer climate
That is how the bulk of climate change might work, coupled with (modulated by) sunspot peak frequency there are cycles of global warming and cooling like waves in the ocean. When the waves are closely spaced, the planets warm; when the waves are spaced farther apart, the planets cool.
Using a box of air in a Copenhagen lab, physicists traced the growth of clusters of molecules of the kind that build cloud condensation nuclei. These are specks of sulphuric acid on which cloud droplets form. High-energy particles driven through the laboratory ceiling by exploded stars far away in the Galaxy – the cosmic rays – liberate electrons in the air, which help the molecular clusters to form much faster than climate scientists have modeled in the atmosphere. That may explain the link between cosmic rays, cloudiness and climate change.
The ultimate cause of the solar magnetic cycle may be cyclicity in the Sun-Jupiter centre of gravity. We await more on that. In addition, although the post 60s warming period is over, it has allowed the principal green house gas, water vapour, to kick in with humidity, clouds, rain and snow depending on where you live to provide the negative feedback that scientists use to explain the existence of complex life on Earth for 550 million years. The planet heats and cools naturally and our gasses are the thermostat. Check the web site of the Danish National Space Center.
Keeping in mind that windmills are hazardous to birds, be wary of the unintended consequences of the all-knowing environmental lobby groups.

Larry Sheldon

Win, lose, or draw, there seems to be unspoken agreement that “cold is good”, and “warm is bad”.

I don’t get it.

Historically (and pre-historically), cold has been associated with pestilence, famine, disease, disaster. Warm has been associated with plenty, wealth, progress.

So I guess I am a denialist. I deny that warm is bad.

MikeC

I know you didn’t call her a moron but you sure made her look like one

Alan

Immature is exactly how I would describe the climate catastrophists. I suppose if you go straight from school to university and stay on to do research, you’ll never to get experience the obstinate real world where people don’t usually get their way by throwing tantrums and calling people names. And some people can recognise the difference between truth and belief. Strength of belief is, of course, no predictor of proof.

A good example of truth and belief in science can be found in the book When Life Nearly Died by Michael J. Benton. Benton is Professor of vertebrate palaeontology at the University of Bristol. In chapter 3 ‘The Death of Catastrophism’ Benton describes the early development of geology and palaeontology and the effect of Charles Lyell’s publication Principles of Geology in 1830:

“Lyell’s brilliant disposal of catastrophism in the 1830s made it impossible for anyone to study mass extinctions within the bounds of normal science” [pp. 69].

Later on he writes: “Charles Lyell’s rejection of catastrophism in the 1830s, and Darwin’s espousal of gradualism in evolution in 1859, seemed self evident by 1900. True, catastrophism reared its ugly head from time to time, whether in discussions of the extinction of the dinosaurs, or in Otto Schindewolf’s writings, but it was easy to ridicule such ideas. And ridiculed they were through much of the twentieth century’ [pp. 94].

Nowadays all right minded palaeontologists believe in the Permian Extinction and an asteroid strike at the KT boundary. They truly believed both then and now but what they believed was different. Sound familiar? Swap gradualism and catastrophism and you could be talking about climatology.

A year ago I read Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers and I believed it. Since then I’ve read a dozen books and waded through piles of scientific papers and blogs. It’s actually shocking how much investment in time I had to make. Now, I utterly reject climate catastrophism in general and positive feedback in particular. Does CO2 warm? Sure it does, but not much. There appears to be four separate piles of scientific papers produced by four separate groups of scientists. They can be loosely labeled:

Some scientists in groups 2 to 4 actually talk to each other and are trying to make a synthesis out of the data. All the catastrophists are in group 1 and have to attack any other explanation, which is what they do. I don’t believe them any more. I wouldn’t believe them if they gave me the time of day because of the way they behave. Thanks for all the good work on your blog and for all your time and effort. Just ignore the insults.

Andrew Kunz

At the risk of coming off as arrogant, the stronger the opinion, the general lack of depth it contains. I sort of blame the internet for this, but its always been an issue. It is very likely that the person who’s commentary initiated the current stream is probably regretting their first draft. We all do at some point.

The most difficult, though most rewarding, aspect of introducing a more reasoned and skeptical approach to this subject, is calming people down and taking the emotion (and politics) out of the science. Your calm and reasoned response kept the possibibility of further discussion open. That being said, it sure is frustrating sometimes.

Andy Kunz
Winnipeg

Michael M. Butler

Alec Rawls (as quoted) used the expression “Morons”. Your correspondent didn’t pay close enough attention to the attribution and indentation to see that it was not you who said it. Such is life on the Internet.

See this paper by Georgieva, Bianchi, and Kirov. The correlation between sunspots and magnetic activity on the sun is less than one, and has been going down in the last few decades. They argue that total magnetic activity is much better correlated with global warming than is sunspot number alone.

(really this should be some combined AMO/PDO metric, and the exact dates of PDO reversals can be argued about, but I was going for quick and dirty). Here is what I got:

and the graph which follows may be interpreted in this fashion:

1. If PDO is cold, the dampening effect is so strong that temperature cannot rise.
2. If PDO is warm, solar forcing causes a temperature rise although there is a lag.
3. If solar is unusually high and if PDO warm phase energy accumulates in the atmosphere

Based on only a few cycles (warm-cold-warm-cold) there is insufficient repetition to verify these guesses. But just saying the chart asserts no correlation between solar and temperature is silly. (straining to prevent keyboard from typing “moronic”…)

Too bad we only have three decades of optical density info, that might be interesting if overlaid on these data sets.

joshv

Oh come now Jennifer, he finally responds to you and you are suddenly struck mute?

I think you are just being too clever, since the title of the post was “Moron! The sun!”. Or am I reading that wrong?

morganovich

interesting that the decoupling of sunspots and had/crut takes place right around the same time that a large (and by large, i mean 30-40%) number of ground stations were removed from the dataset… doesn’t prove anything, but likely worth a look. it certainly alters the apples to apples comparisons.

morganovich

a question:

what is the scale on the Y axis of the graph? what is the unit?

Chris Schoneveld

“I wouldn’t say that I am a total sun hawk, meaning that I believe the sun and natural trends are 100% to blame for global warming.”

Why are you using the word “blame”? In my dictionary “blame” has a negative connotation. It assigns the responsibility for something bad. Are you assuming that global warming (natural or man made) is bad by definition?

Andy

Don’t worry we can all Jennifer is a cockend.

Jennifer

Well now, doesn’t this just beautifully illustrate the problems with the way you run this blog. You allow nasty and abusive people to run riot in the comments, and you never bother to tell anyone to tone it down, or dissociate yourself from their childishness. You implicitly endorse them, and so you are just as nasty and immature as people like ‘Andy’.

Regarding your comments on my post. Firstly, using that nifty ‘moron’ search, I see that of the ~30-odd uses of the word, less than 10 are by people who oppose your views. Your claim that it is “usually wielded by my critics” is obviously just a belief that you didn’t bother to research properly – a lot like your climate views. You claim that “The word “moron” has never, ever appeared on this site in text I have written”. Did you write the blog post entitled “More in the sun”?

Your second point doesn’t make much sense. You’re saying use the comments, but you make it clear that you almost always ignore the comments. You certainly ignored Anthony Watts when he said you had misquoted him.

Your third point is based on a misunderstanding. I didn’t say you were simplistic an immature in that one post, I said you were simplistic and immature throughout this blog. For example, your criticism of realclimate in this post is written in a style worthy of a ten year old. You come across as very dense, and unable to take on any criticism, because you reproduce the same graphs time and time again, ignoring the criticisms that are made each time you do. You don’t even rebut criticisms, but simply ignore them. This is primary school behaviour.

You claim that “One group out there tends to argue that the sun is largely irrelevant to the past century’s temperature increases. Another argues that the sun is the main or only driver. I argue that the evidence seems to point to it being a mix, with the sun explaining some but not all of the 20th century increase, and I am the one who is simplistic?”. This is the kind of nonsense that you constantly discredit yourself with. The two groups you describe simply don’t exist – you’ve invented them. Obviously the sun plays a role in climate. It’s one half of the equation. And as such, its role in climate has been studied a huge amount. But obviously, you haven’t read any of the studies. One particularly well known recent study found that even if all the warming from 1900-1970 was due to solar activity, then solar activity could account for less than 30% of the post-1970 warming. Your claims about the Sun’s role in the climate are not supported by the data.

Point four: “The chart uses a trailing 12 average of temperature as well as sunspots, which is why the line does not flatten and fall at the end. I have to think a bit if I accept this metric as the correct comparison”. No, it uses a central average. Your comments about ‘flatten and fall at the end’ are mystifying. Why should it?

“I see nothing in this chart that is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the sun might have been responsible for perhaps half of the 20th century warming” – what, the fact that whether the 11 year average sunspot count is going up or down bearing little or no resemblance to whether the temperature goes up or down doesn’t seem inconsistent to you? The lack of a change of rate in warming in 1920 or 1980? Your beliefs are clearly too strongly held for you to see what’s right before your eyes. Please give us your take on this graph, which includes CO2.

“have all along contended that Co2 will likely drive 0.5-1.0C warming over the next century” – please explain the analysis you have carried out to come to this conclusion. Or did you just pick that range because you liked it?

“there is still a positive warming trend when you take out cycles like the PDO and effects of the sun and other such influences” – quite right. “…but that trend, even if all due to CO2, appears to be far below catastrophic sensitivity levels.” – quite wrong. Try reading the recent IPCC report. There’s a good chapter on attribution of climate change.

“Should a decreased solar output yield decreased temperatures? Or, if that output is still higher than a historical average, will it still drive temperatures higher? The answer likely boils down to how fast equilibrium is reached, and I don’t know the answer, nor do I think anyone else does either.” – you confess your own ignorance, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that everyone is as ignorant as you are. The response time scales of different parts of the climate system are quite well known, actually. Here’s a little experiment that you can do to investigate how quickly the atmosphere can respond to changes in incoming solar energy: go outside at midday. Then go outside 12 hours later. Which one was colder? Why? Repeat the same experiment six months later. What differences were there?

“try to learn from criticisms in the comments and improve or modify my positions next time I post on a similar subject” – I’ve seen no evidence of that at all. Perhaps you could point out an example of where you’ve modified your views in response to comments.

Andy

Immature, oh yes, nasty, compared to your continual aggressive and condescending tone, repeated for all to see in the above post, I’m quite nice really.

I suspect your style is worthy of a ten year old, now run along mummy is calling because your nappy needs changing.

san quintin

Hi Andy
No, Jennifer’s style is not that of a ten year old. I imagine she’s just a bit sick of people who don’t know much about climate science pretending they do. As I’ve said lots of times, if you denialists think climate scientists are wrong, then publish in the mainstream (ie not Energy and Environment) literature. Until you do, and until you produce an alternative theory with as much explanatory power as AGW/GHG then you are irrelevant.

Actually (and warming to my task) you ARE irrelevant. You’ve had several decades to develop a coherent scientific alternative and you’ve failed. That’s why you have little influence now. Good luck!

Well I guess that if Mann et al are so sure of themselves, why not make their data available for scrutiny?

Oh thats right, teh science is settled! 🙂

Mailman

san quintin

Mailman.
Like most denialists all you do is complain. If the sceptics think that Mann got it so wrong, why don’t you all produce your own reconstructions. In other words DO SOME SCIENCE! You might well find out that (a) it’s hard and (b) that you get a hockey stick. Strange, isn’t it, that you get a hockey stick from permafrost boreholes, glacier length records etc? How do you explain that? None of these use bristlecone pines. I’ve even produced a dendro reconstruction which shows a hockey stick (and I’m not one of the ‘hockey team’ and I didn’t use strip-bark pines).

You lot are clueless. The only thing you seem to worry about is your own self-interest.

Mike Davis

Well San:
I guess you are probabley right about that. Did you bother to look at the vertical scale of the graph? How about the trouble with smoothing? The issue of using different smoothing effects on different time periods? How about splicing temp data from one area to proxy data from a different area as the temp data from the originating area did not match? We have not yet goten to the error bars surronding the data. Accuracy of measurement? Massaging of data to fit theory? Should we discuss statistical analesis? How about a stastician stating that he was confused by the reasoning to use improper analysis to arrive at a best guess.The quote: Wrong meathod right answer bad science. Does that sound familiar to you? If not you hav not been keeping up with your reading. I belive it was all over the web. I belive it was in the Wegman report about Mann. Or the NAS report to congress during the hearing. But of course I do not remember the name of the statistics expert. I belive it was Joll or Jolff it started with something like that.
I am happy that you were able to find a hockey stick in the data you used. I realized that you were not picking cherries as you needed more than cherries to make that fruit salad that you produced, consumed and regurgitated for future enjoyment.
I think a lot of people here fit the title realist more than denielst as they (unlike you) Have some understanding of the reality of nature. And for your information I think they are more interested in the future of the entire globe than the AGWA group you belong to.

san quintin

Hi Mike
I note that you didn’t answer any of my points. Ever done any real climate science? Thought not.

dude

wow. all you guys are childish… can you step away from your argument and read your statements again? as a bystander, it’s hard to believe the discussion of science comes up, at all, from any of you.

look, skepticism is good. there is no telling what or where a significant discovery or breakthrough (in the nature and understanding of climate science) may come from. it may be a skeptic who solves the riddle. all you guys are basing your arguments around whether or not one of you, or all of you, is childish. it’s silly.

first of all, “Climate Change” is an oxymoron. can we agree on that? second of all, can we agree that the debate about climate is not over? (that should be obvious here) and that’s not so much a question as it is a request. no scientist, i don’t care how many nobel prizes, or degrees or panels of other scientists you may have, can look at a pile of data, that is somewhat leaning to one conclusion or the other, and declare, “the science is in, the debate is over”.

the nature of dinosaurs: how they died off… did they die off or are they now birds? was tyrannosaurus a hunter, or a vulture-like scavenger? were they warm or cold blooded? etc, etc, etc… the debates go on. the difference is, they do not have some beleaguered politician who won the popular but lost the electoral vote to wade into the argument.

ladies (i hope) and gentlemen (i hope), just because al gore says it’s one way and produces a documentary on the subject, does not mean science or debate and skepticism cease. if someone told you you had to eat cardboard to save the planet, would you not question them…? furthermore, that leads to the second part of the problem here:

we are not talking about saving the planet… (the planet will be here no matter what). we are talking about habitat for human kind (and some animals). it’s a bit out of our control whether we like it or not. we might influence things negatively or positively in one degree or another, but we cannot manage it and govern it completely no matter how much we like to think so.

point is, skepticism is healthy. stop being so convinced you’re right, or that al gore is right. there are always going to be “doomed earth”ers and “mankind is evil” believers… even if al gore is proven wrong, someone else is going to take his place on some other topic of the destruction of the planet. sunspot activity is on the decline. we should fear a new ice age or a “mini-ice age” as just a few centuries ago. warmer weather does not bring with it the sort of disaster, globally, as does an ice age.

get the idea out of your head that we are destroying the earth and get on with real science that is always questioning, asking, testing, inquiring, studying… never putting the conclusion before the facts… oh, and grow up!

Psi

Jenn, Jenn, Jenn–

“I didn’t say you were simplistic an immature in that one post, I said you were simplistic and immature throughout this blog. For example, your criticism of realclimate in this post is written in a style worthy of a ten year old. You come across as very dense, and unable to take on any criticism, because you reproduce the same graphs time and time again, ignoring the criticisms that are made each time you do. You don’t even rebut criticisms, but simply ignore them. This is primary school behaviour.”

You are hurting your case. Your words are insulting and abusive.

To me, Mr. Meyer seems remarkably thoughtful and balanced, given the intrinsically controversial nature of the topic. He weighs different perspectives and does his best to sort out plausible hypotheses from those that are implausible. He sometimes cites people who have a more abrasive style than he does, and he doesn’t censor comments from such people either.

To me, all of this is to be praised, not criticized. Still less could I approve the tone or substance your response to it, which comes across as shrill and defensive.

Your defender, San Quintin, writes:

“No, Jennifer’s style is not that of a ten year old. I imagine she’s just a bit sick of people who don’t know much about climate science pretending they do. As I’ve said lots of times, if you denialists think climate scientists are wrong, then publish in the mainstream (ie not Energy and Environment) literature. Until you do, and until you produce an alternative theory with as much explanatory power as AGW/GHG then you are irrelevant.”

I would agree with him that your style is not that of a ten year old, although it comes much closer to matching that description than does Mr. Meyer’s. But Quintin’s argument that only analyses published in peer reviewed journals have any merit betrays an astonishing overconfidence in established authorities and a remarkable lack of faith in the value of real democracy and open debate. The very reason we are having this debate is that the science is *not* clear, not all scientists agree on it, and those who try to hide behind the illusion that they do are just fooling themselves.

To me, at this stage in the debate, the critics of global warming theory are winning the debate. And it is because of the way advocates of anthropogenic global warming respond in public to those who have the audacity to ask them to engage in a reasoned and civil debate. Like Jennifer, they try to let insults cover for the intellectual deficiencies of their positions.

DeltaPapa

san quintin:
“Ever done any real climate science?”

Having served as an Air Force meteorologist, I have “done…real climate science.” Like most meteorologists of today, I find AGW to be a monumental hoax and fraud perpetrated for the political and personal gain of AGW proponents in defiance of and contradiction to science and scientific principles. Mann’s calculations produces hockey sticks from white noise, toilets, and any other assemblage of numbers, so anyone who would place an iota trust in such obvious nonsense can hardly be regarded as a scientist instead of a false propagandist. Likewise, James Hansen and many of the other leading so-called “climate scientists are not and never have been meteorologists or statisticians, so AGW proponents who deny, intmidate, and censor the scientific publications of genuine meteorologists and statisticians with decades of real experience in meteorology and applied statistical mathematics are engaging is an unprecedented assault upon the basic principles and ethics of science.

I recommend the reading of the recent comments of a distinguished and award winning meteorologist with more than fifty years of experience in meteorological climate science. Some of his comments included:

“Bill Gray, Professor Emeritus Colorado State University (AMS Fellow, Charney Award recipient) On The Hijacking of the American Meteorological Society (AMS)”

“Hansen and his legion of environmental-political supporters (with no meteorological-climate background) have done monumental damage to an open and honest discussion of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) question. He and his fellow collaborators (and their media sycophantic followers) are responsible for the brainwashing of a large segment of the American public about a grossly exaggerated human-induced warming threat that does not exist.”

“Hansen has little experience in practical meteorology. He apparently does not realize that the strongly chaotic nature of the atmosphere-ocean climate system does not allow for skillful initial value numerical climate prediction.”

“Instead of organizing meetings with free and open debates on the basic physics and the likelihood of AGW induced climate changes, the leaders of the society (with the backing of the society’s AGW enthusiasts) have chosen to fully trust the climate models and deliberately avoid open debate on this issue. I know of no AMS sponsored conference where the AGW hypothesis has been given open and free discussion.”

“The climate modelers and their supporters deny the need for open debate of the AGW question on the grounds that the issue has already been settled by their model results. They have taken this view because they know that the physics within their models and the long range of their forecast periods will likely not to be able to withstand knowledgeable and impartial review (see Appendix). They simply will not debate the issue. As a defense against criticism they have resorted to a general denigration of those of us who do not support their AGW hypothesis.”

“The AGW biases within the AMS policy makers is so entrenched that it would be impossible for well known and established scientists (but AGW skeptics) such as Fred Singer, Pat Michaels, Bill Cotton, Roger Pielke, Sr., Roy Spencer, John Christie, Joe D’Aleo, Bob Balling, Jr., Craig Idso, Willie Soon, etc. to ever be able to receive an AMS award – irrespective of the uniqueness or brilliance of their research.”

“My interaction (over the years) with a broad segment of AMS members (that I have met as a result of my seasonal hurricane forecasting and other activities) who have spent a sizable portion of their careers down in the meteorological trenches of observations and forecasting, have indicated that a majority of them do not agree that humans are the primary cause of global warming. These working meteorologists are too experienced and too sophisticated to be hoodwinked by the lobby of climate simulations and their associated propagandists.”

“To obtain any kind of a balanced back-and-forth discussion on AGW one has to consult the many web blogs that are both advocates and skeptics of AGW. These blogs are the only source for real open debate on the validity of the AGW hypothesis. Here is where the real science of the AGW question is taking place.”

As Dr. Gray noted, AGW propagandists “know that the physics within their models and the long range of their forecast periods will likely not to be able to withstand knowledgeable and impartial review,…they have resorted to a general denigration of those of us who do not support their AGW hypothesis.” This has also been my experience for nearly forty years as the WMO was systematically hijacked by political activists for many decades. Because most meteorologists are employed directly or indirectly by governement and academia, they are all to often intimidated with retaliation and denied the right to exercise free speech to combat the hijacking fof the profession, their professional associations, and the science by a minority of political activists inside and outside their profession, who have promoted their likeminded collaborationists into positions of leadership. Restoring responsible and trustworthy leadership will require a firm public demand to end this hijacking of the science and the debate.

So, “san quintin”, your denigration of dissenting meteorologists and contempt for their honest pursuit and respect for science and the scientific method is noted.